The deer is afraid of the wolf; the wolf of the tiger; and the tiger of the wild bear, the most ferocious and powerful of all animals, walking erect, with long hair hanging from its head.
In southern Chu there was a hunter who could blow a bamboo pipe to imitate the sounds of various animals. He used to lure the deer from their mountain fastness by mimicking their noise, and then shoot
them down.
One day, he was at his tricks again. The wolf, hearing the pipe, thought it was deer and came. The hunter was frightened, so he imitated the roar of a tiger. Off went the wolf, but a tiger appeared. Terror-stricken, the hunter made the sound of the bear. The tiger made off. The bear, hearing the noise, thought it was one of its kind and came. Finding it to be a man, it tore him limb from limb and ate him up.
Allegorical Meaning
This layered fable critiques short-sighted cunning and the catastrophic chain reactions of flawed solutions. A hunter mimics a deer’s call to lure prey, only to attract a leopard. Panicked, he mimics a tiger to scare the leopard, which then draws a real brown bear and results in his gruesome demise.
The Illusion of Control
The hunter embodies overconfidence in human artifice. Believing mimicry grants dominion over nature, he fails to anticipate that deception attracts greater dangers. His bamboo pipe symbolizes the fragility of tricks against primal forces.
Escalation Through Desperation
Each mimicry intensifies the threat: Deer > Wolf > Tiger > Bear
This reflects how relying on progressively riskier deceptions accelerates disaster, creating a vortex of unintended consequences.
Nature’s Indifference to Illusion
Real predators ignore imitations when genuine threats emerge. The bear, unimpressed by the hunter’s final bluff, consumes him—symbolizing nature’s (or reality’s) ultimate supremacy over human artifice. Tricks fail against irreducible power.
The Folly of Unprepared Cunning
The hunter’s fatal error wasn’t mimicry itself, but lacking real power to back his bluffs. Without true “tiger” strength, his imitations were hollow invitations to predators. True security requires substance, not sound effects.
Empowering Oneself vs. Leaning on External Forces
If a man refuses to improve his inner self, and depends on external forces, he can hardly avoid a similar fate to that of the hunter.
Political Allegory of Flawed Strategy
Liu Zongyuan, writing during Tang decline, likely targeted imperial “using barbarians to control barbarians” policies. Like the hunter mimicking bigger beasts, the court manipulated warlords to suppress rebels, only to empower greater threats (the bear) that destroyed central authority.
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